The assembling of molecular layered structures has gained recognition in the past, primarily in the context of solid phase synthesis of peptides. R. B. Merrifield reports in Biochemistry, Vol. 3, No. 9 pp. 1385-1390 (1964), the stepwise synthesis of the naturally occurring nonapeptide bradykinin, by attachment of a terminal amino acid to a substrate, a decarboxylation step, and then a coupling step wherein an amino acid residue is attached to the terminal amino acid. The steps are repeated until a peptide with nine amino acid residues is produced.
More recently, this approach to protein synthesis has been expanded to the production of a multilayer film of 1,5-hexadecenyl-trichlorosilane. Lucy Metzer and Jacob Sagiv in J. Am. Chem. Soc., Vol. 105, pp. 674-676 (1983) report a two-step sequence consisting of monolayer absorption, followed by chemical activation of the exposed surface to provide polar absorption sites for the anchoring of the next monolayer.